Welcome to Wikimedia { An introduction to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons What is Wikimedia?
Wikipedia – supported by the Wikimedia Foundation
Mission: to empower and engage people around the world to collect, develop, and disseminate educational content under a free, open license
Wikimedia Foundation does not manage content: all content managed by volunteer community
The Foundation also supports 12 sister projects Anyone is a Wikimedian! Once logged in, open the Wikipedia homepage; click on today’s featured article
In pairs, complete as many of the following in 5 minutes:
Find the talk page
Find the article’s edit history
Find the category/categories this article is included in
Add this article to your watchlist
Find the other languages this article is written in
Find the most recent contributor to this article
Find that contributor’s list of contributions
Find that contributor’s user page
Wikipedia: behind the scenes scavenger hunt But Wikipedia isn’t trustworthy! Actually, in a comparative study, key Wikipedia articles had an average of 4 errors each; compare to 3 for Encyclopaedia Britannica online Anyone can make up anything It’s very difficult to add false information to Wikipedia articles, You don’t know if it’s accurate especially larger, more active ones
There are many community- based assessments for article quality, and all this information is open and available Wikipedians aren’t experts, they’re all amateurs and teens Wikipedians are a very diverse bunch, and they’re all judged on the quality of their edits, not Misconceptions their background How to: Create headers Bold/italicise text Bulleted/numbered lists Link to internal articles Link to external urls Add a category Reference
Editing: getting started Click on your Userpage, then on ‘start this page’ Five minutes to write 2-3 lines about anything – use bold text, italics, 1 list, 2 header sizes Add a internal Wikipedia link Add an external link to a website Add an in-line citation using the editing toolbar template Add the category ‘Wikipedians in Scotland’ Before saving: always ‘preview changes’ and write an edit summary! Editing: taking the plunge Keep a neutral point of view
Verifiability: no original information
Avoid conflicts of interest
Remember: it’s an encyclopaedia
Is this notable? Is it relevant?
Assume good faith!
Writing on Wikipedia Find any Wikipedia article with an image Click on that image and find its image description page on Wikimedia Commons What other articles has this image been used on?
What information can you find out about this image? Where can you find more like it?
Illustrating Wikipedia Available for use, reuse, or All content public domain or Creative modification by anyone, for Commons licencing any purpose
Content can Nearly 24 be used on any million images, Wikimedia film, books, site, in any presentations, language, all audio files – all around the created and world maintained by volunteers
This is Wikimedia Commons Anyone can add an image from Commons to Wikipedia
Find ‘Category:Images uploaded as part of NLS-WMUK collaboration’
Can you find a Wikipedia article related to one of the images?
Is the image already there, or are there any images?
If not: add the image!
[[File:Example.jpg|thumb|Caption for image]]
Can you place an image? Wikimedia websites have 500 million viewers per month
Wikimedia sites have around 21 billion page views per month
Wikipedia has 4.5 million articles in English
There are more than 25 million articles in 285 other languages
There is a community of thousands of editors actively working with content
Responsible for 9m edits each month
Wikimedia movement supports initiatives to open up access for harder to reach groups: i.e. Wikipedia Zero
So why use Wikimedia? Added 1,100 images to Commons – nearly 10% in use on Wikipedia
Supported 9 edit-a-thons
Trained 75 new users, created 35 new articles and improved 34
Views for NLS images on Wikipedia up by approx. 600,000 since May 2014
Wikimedia and the NLS
Create an account
Stay logged in
Like an article or a topic? Add it to your watchlist!
Check an interesting article’s talk page
Spelling error? Fix it!
Still nervous? You can suggest content or resources on an article’s talk page rather than adding it yourself
Tips for a gradual approach Go forth and prosper